But Tom has worked hard and it hasn't helped. So he is assumed as being "in" and because of that, and because of this bullshit association assumed between he and Dickie (Yes, how is Dickie, he says so casually), that Herbert Greenleaf sends him off on the Cunard line to Italy to try to convince Dickie to return to America. Dickie of course, has been living the life of the idle rich, sailing his boat "Bird" and fucking his beautiful fiancé Marg, played by Gwyneth Paltrow and also apparently, fucking anyone else who catches his fancy because he can. It's not that he is lacking in terms of what he has. He has everything a guy could want, one should think. And certainly, our poor Marg isn't lacking either - she's gorgeous and lovely and friendly and smart and working on a book of her own and seems really to love him, which is probably just the problem. Dickie is just the sort to figure that if anyone loves him, they must not be worth very much because he has the kind of guilt and issues that only the rich can afford to have. The rest of us cannot afford to sit around all day second guessing whether or not we are worth loving by some gorgeous thing who has taken a shine to us. WE simply accept it and get down on our knees and among other things, thank God. That is what normal people do. Neurotic rich people (which is not to say that all rich people are neurotic; this is not a tautology, can afford to be this way. And more, Dickie can also afford to fuck around because in his life when has he ever had to face consequences. He's been cleaned up after his entire life and no doubt, everyone has suffered his little tantrums and coddled him. And maybe Marg would be deeply hurt over Dickie's affair, but I doubt she'd leave him. If the tables were turned, I've no doubt he's leave Marg in a second because it's all about him, but Marg seems a little less spoiled than Dickie, a little more capable of really giving of herself. Dickie, like Tom, is a taker and a user. A different kind of user, but a user nonetheless.

Tom does arrive in Italy, and why not. What the hell else is he going to do? There's nothing doing in New York and a trip to Europe, all expenses paid sounds great. From the moment he arrives at the dock to board the boat, the lies build. He meets Meredith Loge, of the fabric Loges or some such family business, yet another rich soul. He tells yet another lie and says that his name is Dickie Greenleaf, so now he is not only not simply a friend of Dickie's, he is Dickie. Maybe he'll go to Italy and then convince himself to come back?

No. He arrives, pale pallid and appalling on the beach, calmly spots Dickie, after practicing some interesting Italian phrases in his hotel room and spying on Dickie and Marg on the beach below - among his expressions, "Cuando esa mia faccia," an interesting mixup from what was meant to be Where is my fiancé, which in his poor Italian he accidentally, though intended by Patricia Highsmith quite obviously, Where is my face. It's a line that will come back to us again and again. He does make his way down, clumsily, but just clumsy enough to be too clever by half, introduces himself to Dickie as if Dickie didn't remember him, which he doesn't because he never knew him. Tom plays on the fact that Dickie will not remember Princeton. Remember, he was there himself but in a different capacity and no doubt saw kids just like Dickie whose days were, as Dickie says, "one big blur" from drinking, maybe drugs too, or whatever. In any case, students who were not there to study and learn. Tom would have been there to study and learn, which is just yet another reason to hate Dickie for having opportunities that Tom never had and then blowing them by drinking his way through school and not learning a damn thing. It's like he was given the gift that would have given Tom Ripley a real chance in life and he just tossed it away as if it were nothing.